As communication services are diversified, an operator may have a specific charging or control policy for a specific area. Currently, the policy is implemented by presence reporting area (PRA) characteristics in the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3 GPP) standard.
Specifically, when a policy and charging rules function (PCRF) or an online charging system (OCS) needs to sense a location change status of user equipment (UE) in a PRA such as a status of entering or leaving the PRA by the UE, the PCRF or the OCS subscribes with a packet data network (PDN) gateway (PGW) to a location change event of the UE in the PRA. When subscribing to the location change event of the UE in the PRA, the PCRF or the OCS delivers, for a multi-PRA scenario, an identity (ID) of a PRA set (set) of all PRAs to the PGW. When receiving subscription information carrying the ID of the PRA set, the PGW continues to deliver the ID of the PRA set to a mobility management entity (MME) or a serving general packet radio service (GPRS) support node (SGSN), to instruct the MME or the SGSN to monitor a location change status of the UE in the PRA and report a location change event of the UE in the PRA to the PCRF or the OCS when a location of the UE in the PRA changes. The PCRF or the OCS performs a new policy or charging adjustment based on the location change event in the PRA.
However, in the prior art, when the MME or the SGSN reports the location change event of the UE in the PRA, only an ID(s) of the PRA is carried, and a correspondence between the ID of the PRA set and the ID of the PRA is not configured in the PGW. Consequently, the MME or the SGSN cannot decide how to report the location change event in the PRA to the PCRF or the OCS.